The Sword and Laser discussion
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Mind Children
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Mind Children, Robotics and BMI research
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There was a sci-fi TV series recently that was on similar lines- Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. The second series in particular shows some supriningly in-depth moral quandaries with mind technology- when we seperate the brain from the body, do we loose what it means to be human? How can we define 'self'? What is the end result of the technology, on how we live, who we are, and who controls the technology? That, and I have a slight man crush on Fran Kranz.
The quandary depends on your hypothesis of how important the self is. If you think the self is only a temporary entity to exist in this world, then it is not very important. But if you think the self means permanent existence, then it would bother you that it would be modified or destroyed in any way. I love analysis that goes further than what is obvious and forces me to think differently. Thinking from a different hypothesis helps me to think of other possibilities.
Personaly, I have mixed feelings about BMI. Part of me really likes the idea that BMI can help a blind person see, a deaf person hear and what not. However, there is this technological pessimist/consipracy theorist that lives inside me that thinks this only spells the doom for our species. To paraphrase a line from Dollhouse Episode 6 of Season 1 "if the technology exists, it will be abused and that's it for our species." In regards to uploading consciousness to computer, watch this you-tube video it's very funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wi...
My man crush for Fran Kranz is not slight.
LOL. I enjoyed that video. Thank you, Dharmakirti. You can't throw the baby out with the bath water. When people think of anything relating to robotics, they think The Terminator. Alberto Santos-Dumont was an aviation pioneer. One of the reasons he committed suicide was that aircraft was being used in war. If we were at a time when we have never heard of flying machines, we can easily only focus on aircraft being used for harmful reasons. As we know, it is mostly used to increase civilization's mobility, which is important for an advanced civilization.
Cellular Computers? Scientists Train Cells to Perform Boolean Functionshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/...
You can probably get more out of wetware then hardware.
The question becomes- Why use the addition material for
simply binary functions? If you were going to increase size, capacity and do some tweaks you'd probably prefer to cube root your IQ. (Enhance your current method of thinking).
Thanks, Warren, for that. I'll add that to my Robotics file. I'm starting to gather articles on them. Here's a link related to machine learning:http://robotics.stanford.edu/~nilsson...
As far as increasing brain IQ to perhaps rival a computer's, the brain has severe limitations, according to The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Here's a passage:
"Although impressive in many respects, the brain suffers from severe limitations. We use its massive parallelism (one hundred trillion interneuronal connections operating simultaneously) to quickly recognize subtle patterns. But our thinking is extremely slow: the basic neural transactions are several million times slower than contemporary electronic circuits. That makes our physiological bandwidth for processing new information extremely limited compared to the exponential growth of the overall human knowledge base."
I've just started this book. Scanning it, it seems the main topic is machine intelligence to super power our mind, but probably via brain machine interface. He predicts that the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be many times greater than an unaided intelligence is capable of.
Aloha wrote: "Thanks, Warren, for that. I'll add that to my Robotics file. I'm starting to gather articles on them. Here's a link related to machine learning:http://robotics.stanford.edu/~nilsson......"
Thanks. I wonder how well our brains would perform if they weren't so heavily influenced by external factors.
FYI- Some light reading:
http://singularityhub.com/
They cover a wide array of topics I'm interested in.
I check it regularly but have a hard time keeping up.
Thanks, Warren. I could really go for the LED eyeshadow. *counting pennies*
The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (other topics)Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines and How It Will Change Our Lives (other topics)
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (other topics)
Neuromancer (other topics)
I finished another chapter in Mind Children this morning, which contained some mind blowing ideas, which would be objectionable to people who are of the western religious leaning, but understandable to people of eastern philosophy leaning. To accept that the mind can be transferred, we have to move from the "body-identity" position to the "pattern-identity" position. With body-identity, you assume that you are composed of the differentiation of your body, as an individual. With pattern-identity, you are the process going on in your head, not your temporary cells. With the pattern-identity position, it is possible to say that you are composed of patterns, hence mathematical components, which can be transferred and uploaded like computational information. Some possibilities with pattern-identity:
- You can super power the mind with the combined power of the computer.
- You can navigate via mind transference.
- You can live beyond your body.
- You can replicate yourself.
- You can create real people simulations of famous people in the past based on scientific evidence collected of that person.
- You can download your mind into a computer simulated world, which is as real as the "real world."
The differentiation between pattern-identity vs. body-identity reminds me of eastern religion with its emphasis that the egoic and willful self is only an illusion whose main function is to provide a mechanic for us to learn and evolve, vs. the western religion's belief of the egoic self from birth to death and beyond. The pattern-identity is more in line with the eastern philosophy that we are only a small part of a whole, and undifferentiated from the whole.
All this reminds me of Neuromancer. I thought that maybe William Gibson might be influenced by Mind Children. However, Mind Children was published in 1988, whereas Neuromancer was published in 1984. That tells me how forward thinking Gibson was. I will have to reread Neuromancer again in light of this.
Lots to think about in relation to BMI research, and the practical, ethical, philosophical and religious thoughts. One thing that was stated was that man has no choice but to keep moving forward, because competition is high. If one country decides to not pursue the advancement in technology due to any objections or other reasons, there's always another country willing to pursue that avenue. This leaves the former country threatened with being left behind in technological, economic, and maybe even defensive advances.